Hindutva, Casteism, and Solidarity for Kashmir
Hindutva is a far-right ethnonationalist movement that imagines India as a solely Hindu nation and is based on the oppression of caste-oppressed people and religious minorities in India. Enforced through Islamophobia, casteism, and violence against Adivasis(the indigenous people of South Asia), Hindutva frames India as a victim under attack from caste-oppressed and non-Hindu South Asians, whom it demonizes as racially and culturally inferior.
The current party in power in India, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and prime minister Narendra Modi are the mainstream face of Hindutva and have long been enacting a fascist state through organized violence, the suppression of political dissent, and rewriting history in school curricula and media. Press censorship has included the incarceration and assassination of journalists (especially Muslim journalists) who speak out against the BJP. Textbooks have begun removing references to the 2002 anti-Muslim pogrom in Gujarat that Modi played an active role in as the chief minister at the time, as well as to multiple Adivasi, Dalit (the most caste-oppressed in the caste hierarchy), and farmers’ social movements. The state is complicit and implicated in rising violence and discrimination against Dalits and Adivasis, including murder, sexual violence, and state violence.
Multiple sources have warned that a genocide of Muslims may be underway in India. In 2022, Georgetown University’s Bridge Inititative placed India at stage 8 (persection) of 10 of a genocide against Muslims, with signs of stage 9 (extermination). The Hindu nationalist state has attempted to disenfranchise Muslims from citizenship through the 2019 Citizenship Amendment Act and National Register of Citizens, validated bans on hijabs in schools through court cases, bulldozed Muslim businesses, homes, mosques, and places of publish worship, and supported the rise of the Nazi-inspired right-wing paramilitary organization Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh(RSS). There have been bans on halal meat, related to the rise of lynching Muslims for transporting, selling, or consuming beef, dramatic escalations in hate speech and dehumanizing language, such as open calls for mass violence against Muslims by prominent BJP members, and widespread mob violence against Muslims.
Violence is escalating. Still, marginalized Indians challenge Hindutva norms and forces by drinking water, eating with dominant castes, wearing hijab, praying in public, and collective demonstration. Because of community organizing, including solidarity marches with Muslims and the farmer’s movement, the BJP no longer has the majority in India’s parliament.
The Hindu supremacist Indian state also enforces a violent military occupation in Kashmir, with widespread sexual violence against Kashmiri women, and forced disappearances and imprisonment of Kashmiri journalists, politicians, and civilians. The Kashmiri people have long been demanding a vote to decide whether Kashmir will merge with India or Pakistan or become an independent nation, yet the Indian state blocks this and furthers its settler colonial project in Kashmir. In 2019, they revoked Kashmir's autonomous status and followed this with the longest internet shutdown in a democracy, and in 2022 Kashmir had the most internet shutdowns of any region in the world. The struggle for Kashmiri freedom is tied to the movement for liberation of Palestine, with Israel being a major weapons supplier to India, and the Indian state arresting Kashmiris for showing solidarity with Palestine.
UChicago has never taken a stance on the violent Hindutva regime in India or the occupation of Kashmir, despite its program in South Asia studies and institutional presence in India. Students from Kashmir in the US face threats and harm from Hindutva supporters, but UChicago does not stand by its Kashmiri students or recognize the Kashmiri cause. UChicago also perpetuates a casteist, Islamophobic status quo by hiring and platforming dominant caste Hindu scholars while erasing and silencing marginalized South Asians (the first Dalit professor at UChicago, Dr. Sanghamitra Das, was hired last year). This is particularly concerning due to the rise of financial and ideological support for Hindu nationalism in the US, as dominant caste Hindu South Asians tend to reproduce caste hierarchy and Islamophobia in the diaspora. UChicago recently refused to include caste in its anti-discrimination policy due to pressure from wealthy Hindu nationalist funders. The UChicago admin and campus community must take a stance for marginalized South Asian students, show solidarity with Kashmir, hire oppressed caste and Muslim South Asian scholars at all levels and across disciplines, and recognize caste as a protected category (like race, gender, disability, etc.).
